Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Redeemed to Perpetuate the Name

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, "You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.”-- Ruth 4:9-10

Boaz is that rare man who does things because God lives (Ruth 3:13). So behind and within all of his provision and care for Ruth is the desire to glorify God. We see this even in his expressed motivation upon winning Naomi's land and Ruth's hand from the redeemer with first dibs. He says he has purchased them to perpetuate the names of dead relatives. Clearly Boaz is a "worthy man" (Ruth 2:1) and not just in the sense of financial means.

Were it not for Boaz's larger-than-self vision, we would not have the story of Ruth. Her faithfulness, her commitment, her optimism, her submission are to her praise and God's, but Boaz's faithfulness -- his full-of-faith-ness -- in redeeming her puts her on the map. Against the dark backdrop of the book of Judges' lawless grotesqueries, in which every man did what was right in his own eyes, Boaz shines with the predawn radiance of God's glory in Christ.

Do you know the name of the kinsman redeemer first in line?

Exactly. In Ruth 4:1, Boaz calls him "friend," and the Hebrew behind that word roughly translates to "so and so." Whether his reasons for passing on Ruth were good or bad, old so-and-so's name is not perpetuated. But we know who Elimelech, Mahlon, Naomi, and Ruth are because Boaz honored them by honoring God.

And because Boaz honored them by honoring God, his own name is perpetuated, and his son's, and his son's son, and his son's son's son, and so on until the lot of them spill into Matthew 1, and what we learn there is that Boaz has redeemed Naomi's plot of land and Ruth's widowed hand in order to perpetuate the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

And this is why any of us are redeemed: not just so that we'd be personally forgiven and fulfilled, but so that God's name and Christ's lordship would be magnified in every nook and cranny of our lives spreading into every square inch of the world until we spill into the life and world to come. We are redeemed for his namesake and to perpetuate his name.